Fish and Wildlife Says Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Doesn't Need Extra Protection
Albuquerque Journal
June 11, 2002The Rio Grande cutthroat trout — New Mexico's state fish — does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.
The fish does not need to be listed as endangered or threatened because habitat conditions have improved and cooperation with private landowners is better, the agency said.
"We will certainly sue to overturn the decision," Noah Greenwald, a Bozeman, Mont.-based conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Tuesday.
"Their own data show the species is critically imperiled," he said.
A spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment on Tuesday.
The Rio Grande cutthroat — one of 15 subspecies named for the brightly colored slashes on the underside of its jaw — is one of two native trout species in New Mexico. Since the 1800s, it has dwindled in the mountain streams of New Mexico and Colorado. Fish and Wildlife determined in 1998 that the scarce but popular sport fish did not warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.
The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity promptly challenged the ruling, and a settlement gave the federal agency until this month to determine whether to list the cutthroat. The Center for Biological Diversity said last year that the fish has disappeared from 95 percent of its original range and that much of the existing population is in poor health.
The agreement with the environmentalists required Fish and Wildlife to review the trout's current population, document any increases in population or habitat and determine threats or future threats. The agency found some cutthroat populations are so small they cannot be considered stable; some have hybridized with other trout species or are threatened by the presence of such species; and some have whirling disease, which is fatal for young fish, Greenwald said.
However, Fish and Wildlife said many of the threats have lessened in the past few years, with better habitat protection afforded by changes in logging and grazing practices on public lands and programs to keep rainbow, brook and brown trout from breeding with cutthroats. It also said that although whirling disease has devastated trout populations in other western states, it's unclear how Rio Grande cutthroats respond to the infection.
The agency found 106 known populations of cutthroats in New Mexico and 161 in Colorado. It said, however, more than half are hybrid populations in which cutthroats have bred with nonnative rainbow trout.
Greenwald said the decision found only 13 small streams, 10 in New Mexico and three in Colorado, harboring "secure" populations. That's "an incredibly small number," particularly since Fish and Wildlife acknowledged the cutthroat faces such threats as breeding with nonnative trout or habitat being damaged by fire or drought, he said.
"That 13 streams is enough to consider the population secure is just prepostorous. . . . In most cases, you could step over these streams, and that's the only secure populations," Greenwald said.